A hotel, a house, a home for our church

Very few organisations would be able to boast such varied dwellings, but the LCA’s Churchwide Office or ‘Church House’ has seen it all.

After its formation from the amalgamation of two main Lutheran synods in Australia in 1966, the LCA used as its home base a stately building at 58-60 O’Connell Street, North Adelaide. Before amalgamation, this property had served as ‘Church House’ for the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia (UELCA) synod, having been dedicated for this purpose in February 1961. Located on the corner of Archer and O’Connell streets, it was an 1882 building that had previously been a pub known as the Huntsman Hotel (and since 2003 has been known as the Archer Hotel).

This Church House was unique. It maintained the façade of an elaborate, stuccoed, sandstone, late-19th-century pub. Inside it featured long, winding corridors, which ‘many referred to as a rabbit warren’, former receptionist Val Schild recalls. The interior was renovated into office spaces. You would not have known it was a hotel based on its interior appearance.

The hotel-cum-Church House served the LCA well for more than 35 years. But all places have their ‘season’, and while the Lutheran appreciation for a nice glass of red wasn’t going away any time soon, it was decided by the then-secretary of the church, the late Mr Robert Eckermann, that another building, with ground-level offices and better carparking, would better service the church’s needs.

Church House was sold, and, in 2002, underwent refurbishments, reverting it back to a food and drink establishment.

A new location was found along the same street, at 197 Archer Street. Once a 52-bed nursing home for elderly blind citizens, Melrose House was named to honour the memory of Sir John Melrose, who donated the original land.

Val, who is a member and volunteer at St Marks Lutheran Church in Mount Barker in the Adelaide Hills with her husband David, worked for the LCA for 25 years. She began her career at Church House in February 1990 and retired in November 2015. She knows both places like the back of her hand.

When Rob Eckermann showed LCA staff through Melrose House for the first time, Val recalls that ‘the odour was anything but pleasant’. As new carpets needed to be laid, the whole inside of the building was refurbished. The end result was an office that was ‘a pleasure to those who worked there’. ‘The reception area was very large, with its huge semi-circle counter made of Huon pine timber,’ Val says.

Some years on, a totem pole was placed into the floor of the reception area, which was quite a task, Val recalls.  Today,  the totem pole resides further east on Archer Street at Wantok Place Museum, which houses many other Papua New Guinea artefacts.

The LCA National (now Churchwide) Office has been at 197 Archer Street since 2002, but this year marks an end to that chapter in the church’s life.

As office staff prepare to move in 2025, this time to 139 Frome Street in the Adelaide CBD, Val hopes and prays ‘that LCA members and the general community will visit, support and uphold the new venue as their own’. She also hopes people will use and enjoy the new resources available to the wider church, especially the new Australian Lutheran College library at 22 Pulteney Street, Adelaide.